Don't Start Feeling Sorry For Goldman Just Yet

Reuters reports that the US Treasury has confirmed that it is to sell its 27% stake in Citi off piecemeal this year.

If the firm's stock price holds up around the 4.27 level, US taxpayers will end up making a profit of $7bn on the deal.

And CNBC reports that Rochdale Securities bank analyst Richard Bove has changed his recommendation on Citi to a 'buy', saying that he believes that the sale of the US government's stake in the company is already priced into the market.

Morgan Stanley, of course, won the mandate as lead underwriter and advisor on the Citi stock sale, and some have pointed to the absence of Goldman Sachs in all this, suggesting that it's confirmation that the firm has lost clients in the wake of the Goldman bashing which seems to have been all the rage for the last 12 months or so.

Well, don't starting feeling too sorry for Goldman just yet, as Fox Business News' Charlie Gasparino is reporting that his sources tell him that the firm is cleaning up from trading debt, and that Goldman's earnings, due in 3 weeks or so, could reveal record fixed income revenues of over $6.8bn.

In the meantime, Bloomberg reports that RBC Capital Markets in planning to become a top 10 investment bank in the US in the next 2 years by bagging business with more mid-cap corporates. But the Canadian firm may be facing a difficult task. The news agency quotes Michael Holland, chairman of Holland & Co, who said: 'The history is not promising; it's going to be an uphill climb for them. The business is incredibly competitive, and a lot of it has to do with relationships'.

And The Financial Times reports that US regulator The Securities and Exchange Commission has written to the CFOs of around 20 financial groups to ask whether they have engaged in transactions similar to 'Repo 105', the accounting technique used by Lehman Brothers to take billions in debt off its balance sheet.

Finally, the newspaper also reports that Robert Moffat, a former SVP at IBM, has pleaded guilty to disclosing non-public information in 2008 to Danielle Chiesi, then a consultant with New Castle funds. Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam and Ms Chiesi were indicted last year for using confidential tips to earn millions of dollars in illegal stock trades. They both deny the charges.